For the first time in history, Wales will have a black first minister, a first for the United Kingdom and for all of Europe: Vaughan Gething, elected yesterday in the internal vote for the leadership of the Welsh Labor Party, will be sworn in next Wednesday to take over from his outgoing predecessor Mark Drakeford.
"Today we turn a page in the history book of our nation, a history we write together," a beaming Gething, a lawyer born 50 years ago to a Welsh father and a Zambian mother, told the Labor assembly in Cardiff.
"And not only because I have the honor of being the first black leader of a European nation, but because there has also been a generational change", he underlined.
Once in office, although he is the first African-descendant to hold the office, Gething will become the third non-white prime minister of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, after the English and British prime minister Rishi Sunak, of Indian origins, and the Scottish prime minister Hamza Youssaf, from a Pakistani family.
Gething won the Labor contest with 51.7% of the vote beating his rival Jeremy Miles, who took 48.3%.
A challenge, the BBC recalls, which was not without controversy: in particular the new leader of the Welsh nation was reproached by the opposition of the nationalist party Plaid Cymru for having accepted a donation of 200,000 pounds from the Dauson Environmental Group, a company owned by businessman David John Neal, convicted in 2013 for dumping waste in a protected area and in 2017 for failing to remove that waste.
Both sentences were suspended, but the businessman has had and continues to have problems with the law.
And a few days ago it emerged that between 2016 and 2018 Gething lobbied an environmental regulator on behalf of Neal.
In an interview the incoming prime minister defended his conduct, saying he had always "scrupulously followed the rules" and that letters sent to the Welsh Environment Agency on behalf of Neal's Atlantic Recycling "were part of my job in my constituency" given that the company employs a considerable number of people.
The newly elected were congratulated by Labor leader Keir Starmer, for whom Gething "will lead a hopeful and ambitious Welsh Labor government, facing a tired and failed Conservative government in Westminster".
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